p16, v7.10 — Business News & Trends

Business News & Trends

Mountain Views News Saturday, March 9, 2013

MVNews this week: Page 16

BUSINESS NEWS & TRENDS

Mountain Views News Saturday, March 9, 2013

DOLLARS AND ENTS

By Carl Davis, CIMA

BUSINESS TODAY

The latest on Business News, Trends and Techniques

TAX REFUNDS ARE VULNERABLE TO
IDENTITY THEFT

Hollywood may have just produced a film playing on the issue, but real identity
theft is no laughing matter. Victims are devastated by decimated bank accounts,
destroyed credit scores and an intrusion on their privacy. Our growing reliance
on electronic data and systems has increased our vulnerability and created new opportunities for
identity theft in unexpected places—including your federal tax refund.

According to the House of Representative’s Committee on Oversight & Government Reform, identity
theft-related tax fraud is a growing problem. The crime works like this: a thief steals a Social Security
number and then diverts the individual’s tax refund into a personal account that is quickly drained
before the victim is aware of the theft. The fraud may not be discovered until the taxpayer attempts to
file a return or claim a refund, and it can take months for the IRS to investigate and return the funds
to the rightful owner.

The IRS has recently doubled its efforts to prevent this type of fraud and address victim concerns,
but you should also take some steps to protect yourself. Your best defense is to prevent your personal
financial information from falling into the wrong hands. Here are some guidelines for protecting
yourself from tax refund fraud.

Protect your Social Security number. Your government-issued identification is prized information
to thieves intent on opening fake accounts and claiming refunds that don’t belong to them. Keep your
card in a safe place in your home rather than in your wallet and don’t provide your number unless
absolutely necessary.

Monitor your financial accounts. Check your account balances and transactions regularly to spot
unauthorized activity.

Check your credit reports. You are entitled to a free credit report annually from each of the three
major credit bureaus: Experian®, Transunion® and Equifax®. If you notice adverse credit actions or
accounts that you did not open yourself, take action.

Keep financial documents secure. Keep hard copies of your returns under lock and key, and shred
statements you no longer need. Criminals have been known to go through personal trash in pursuit
of financial records.

Take extra care online. Maintain a firewall on your personal computer and avoid accessing your
financial information on open networks. Clear your browser history and “cookies” (the little files that
remember passwords or previous visits to websites) before and after e-filing your taxes or visiting
financial sites that contain your private information.

Beware phishing schemes. “Phishing” is a method of falsely soliciting information with criminal
intent. Identity thieves have become more sophisticated, using design programs to replicate logos
and create emails and even websites that look legitimate, but are not. If you receive an email that
appears to be from the IRS—or any institution, for that matter—that contains a request for your
social security number or financial accounts, it is probably a phishing scam that should be forwarded
to the agency it is attempting to represent.

Contact the proper authorities if you suspect you’ve been a victim of identity theft. If your tax
refund is involved, notify the IRS by completing IRS Identity Theft Affidavit (form 14039), which can
be found at irs.gov. Also contact your bank, credit card companies and the local police. Talk to your
financial advisor for additional help establishing safeguards for your financial information.

Carl H Davis, CIMA®, CRPC® is a Financial Advisor and Vice President with Ameriprise Financial
Services, Inc. in Los Angeles , CA He specializes in fee-based financial planning and asset
management strategies and has been in practice for 36 years. To contact him at 310-954-2566 or via
email @ carl.h.davis@ampf.com, or at 10880 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles CA 90024

Brokerage, investment and financial advisory services are made available through Ameriprise
Financial Services, Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC.

This communication is published in the United States for residents of California only

By La Quetta M. Shamblee, MBA

CAKE FOR THE POOR

“We are not rich by what we possess but by what
we can do without.” - Immanuel Kant

On Tuesday, March 5th I attended UCLA’s State
of the Nonprofit Sector Report and Funders’
Breakfast. It was held at the beautiful Skirball
Cultural Center where the Mulholland Dr. bridge
meets the 405 freeway. As thousands of cars
and trucks made their trek across this congested
mountain pass, at least 300 individuals gathered
inside to hear this year’s Annual Report prepared
the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA:
“Spread Thin: Human Services Organizations in
Poor Neighborhoods.”

The majority of attendees were leaders from the
nonprofit sector, joined by representatives from
foundations that provide grants and other support,
and directors of local government agencies. After
Christine Essel, President of Southern California
Grantmakers (SCG) welcomed the attendees and
introduced Dr. Frank Gilliam, Dean of the UCLA
School of Public Affairs. He spoke of the role of
his department in preparing leaders for public
service, stating, “We need to get to the place
where our beautiful theories meet ugly facts.”

Next, a panel of distinguished UCLA scholars
provided background information on their
research to prepare this report. Their findings
point to the “growing wealth disparity between
the ultra-rich and everyone else, particularly the
very poor.” The notion of “nonprofit deserts”
indicates concentrated pockets, communities
of poverty through Los Angeles County that
lack basic safety-net services like healthcare,
educational institutions and social services.
Of approximately 500 census tracts, 24% are
categorized as nonprofit deserts – not surprising,
all in neighborhoods with the highest rates of
poverty.

What is surprising is that nonprofits in
communities that demonstrate the greatest need
actually receive the least amount of financial
support from government funders. The data
shows that this dynamic is most pervasive in
South LA, particularly in communities with at
least 20% of African Americans. Chris Hoene,
Executive Director of the California Budget
Project shared a perspective, “Societies that are
inherently unequal, have long-term problems”
(as it pertains to the income gap between the
wealthy and the poor and access to basic services
and resources).

Recent economic reports speak to the beginnings
of a recovery. However, the impact of the recent
Federal sequester is unknown. We are all looking
forward to hearing of economic moving forward.
But consider that all growth is not good growth.
If you think the middle class in American has
been squeezed beyond reason, consider the
plight and pressure being placed on those in the
low-income tier.

The UCLA poster from the Luskin School that
served as a backdrop for the panelists on stage
included a tagline, “Where Scholarship Meets the
Streets.” Coupled with Dr. Gilliam’s statement at
the beginning of the event, it was encouraging to
know that an internationally-respected research
institution is also focused on identifying practical
solutions. The final panel was comprise of four
department heads from government agencies in
Los Angeles.

The moderator, Essel, posed the final question
for each of them to answer, “Considering what
we have learned from this report, what is the
one thing that you would recommend for your
department?” Two of them responded to the
question by stating practical, concrete things that
they could implement – one included an appeal
to the audience to, “Hold us (the government
agencies and elected officials) accountable.”
The other two provided responses typical of
bureaucrats, “Check our website for information,”
and “I’ll be sharing this information with my
staff.” I thought it was an accurate reflection
of how we are currently dealing with this as
a society. Perhaps half of us understand the
need and importance of bearing some level of
responsibility for our neighbors, and the other
half simply expect them “to eat cake” that they
don’t have money to buy, nor the resources for
the ingredients or a working to stove with which
to make one.

A full copy of the annual report is available
at: http://civilsociety.ucla.edu/practitioners/
publications/reports

HOW TO CREATE A MIND

ARE YOU MARKETING TO AIR?

How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed
(Viking Press 282 pgs plus notes) is the latest offering from
noted inventor, author and futurist Ray Kurzweil in which
he delves further into his vision of the development of real
AI (Artificial Intelligence). Mr. Kurzweil has been in the
news as of late as he has accepted a position as Google’s new
Director of Engineering. His project for the search giant will
be to build a search engine so intuitive and powerful that it
will eventually know the end users better than they know
themselves, answering queries before they’re even posed.
In this book Kurzweil introduces his Pattern Recognition
Theory of Mind concept as a tool for creating a digital brain
by mimicking and expanding upon the design of the human
neocortex. The neocortex is the outer part of the human
brain, visible as the familiar grey, wrinkled folds we imagine
when we think of the word “brain”. In humans, this part of
the brain is associated with higher mental functions such
as sensory perception, spatial reasoning, conscious thought
and language. The Pattern Recognition Theory of Mind
holds that the human neocortex functions via various neural
connections that form and re-form based upon input which
can be interpreted as sensory input. According to the author
the brain processes these inputs using a basic algorithm that
has the effect of ultimately giving rise to human thought.
Kurzweil believes that due to the physical space limitations
of the human skull our capacity for information processing is limited to the physical 300 million
pattern recognition processors, connected horizontally and vertically, that the neocortex contains.
In his vision for a digital brain the number of processors would be expanded to as many as a trillion
processing units. It is the physical structure and inner workings of what we call our brain that gives rise
to what we identify as our mind. The possibilities for the emergent identity we know as intelligence
are astounding for a machine that could accurately model the human brain while being composed of
a trillion processing units and running more sophisticated versions of the algorithms that comprise
human thought as we know it.

I found this book to be an interesting and thought-provoking read. The subject matter was at times
highly specialized and dense but the author does an excellent job of making it accessible to the
interested reader. His new position as the Director of Engineering at Google makes the context of
this work all the more intriguing for me. Kurzweil believes that we now have the capability to build
a machine that can re-create human intelligence and then have it outfitted with enormous quantities
of information in the form of everything Google indexes from the Web and beyond. There are
compelling reasons to believe that this approach just may work. The success of the Jeopardy! playing
(and winning) AI project showed just how far the field of AI Computing has come in respect to
the natural language processing needed to correctly “answer” Jeopardy questions. Coupled with a
database consisting of upwards of 200 million pages of natural language documents, including the full
text of Wikipedia, Watson had all the data and computing power it needed to best the 2 top human
Jeopardy players in history. Critics of Kurzweil’s approach argue, among other things, that computers
just don’t have capacity to “understand” language instead relying upon statistical probabilities of what
is being answered in response to a query while he states that this technique is exactly what a human
brain does as well. Regardless of your informed or uninformed stance on the subject of AI, this book
makes an excellent read.

Q. “I’ve set up a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a LinkedIn account, but I’m not seeing any
action. What am I doing wrong?”

When this question comes up, we always ask, “How many people are you connecting with and who
are they.” The answer is usually, “Oh, we don’t have that many Likes, Followers or Connections we
and don’t go on them much.”

If you have 10 Likes, two connections, five followers and an email list of three, you are basically
marketing to air. It’s not enough to set up the account, you have to commit to building the audience
and being social.

The people who are frustrated with their social media presence are those who haven’t built the
audience and usually those that don’t post, comment, share and participate. With social media, it’s…
social. It works better when you participate. You start to understand it more when you join in. It
works better when you have people to interact with.

If you’re frustrated with your current social media presence, ask a few questions:

Do your business cards and other printed materials have your social media links on them? Does your
web site have links to your social media sites on every page? Do all of your emails contain links? Are
you making it easy for people to find you and connect with you on your social media sites? Do you
listen to your connections in social media and comment on what they are doing? Are you posting
consistently?

And the big question: Are you giving people a good reason to join you on social media?

About MJ: MJ and her brother David own HUTdogs, a creative services business that specializes
in Internet Marketing strategies and Social Media Education for businesses and non-profits. “Like”
them on Facebook for trending news in social media, internet marketing and other helpful tips, www.
facebook.com/hutdogs.